Europe

Albulena, the peanut butter to my jelly for the past 20 years, is getting married. The lucky fella in this incredible love story is Dardan, whom I only just met very recently, because of obvious reasons to people who know us (like the whole moving to Australia thing). Due to a lot of their family living in Kosovo, it’s time for a destination wedding.

I am home. I sit on my dad’s balcony with a glass of wine in my hand. This is where I live now. My hair’s bleached almost pure white to get rid of the excess green. I have a job in telemarketing that I hate. My friends have been scattered around the country, making it harder to see them spontaneously, but like my family, they’re a lot closer now than they have been for the past few years. My plans to go back to school have been compromised by new laws, so I’m back to square one. Here I am, just trying to make a life for myself in a country that is home, yet seems so foreign to me after a long time on the road. I’m standing still, but constantly moving.

2014 has come and gone quickly. Just this time last year, I was preparing for my final exam and packing up my things to put in storage. I was daydreaming of colourful sarees, paradise beaches and freedom. Now, a year later, I am doing almost exactly the same. I have booked a flight to Cambodia early next year, and have been granted a Working Holiday Visa for Australia. I am excited, nervous and poor. I still have a lot of planning and purchasing to do before I’m ready for departure.

As everyone sits down to reflect on their year (usually with that stupid Facebook feature), I’ve created a list (yes, another list) of some accomplishments/experiences that I found worthy of sharing with someone. I clearly live an exciting life.

Today is my 23rd birthday. This marks the end of my 22 things list, and of course I didn’t even make it to 20. I will cry into my cake later. Just kidding, I already ate it.

So, my birthday started with a night out. I asked out a few of my former colleagues, and we ended up getting pretty drunk, as it was Tequila Thursday, a very honoured tradition by Nanna and me. Nanna and Mikkel were not only nice enough to come out with me, they even bought me a super considerate present:

That’s right, stickers and a giant brown dildo. We tried out a few names, so I’m not sure if it’s Bruno Mars of Chocolate Bent. I might do a poll later. Well, at least I didn’t go home completely alone. EDIT: He now goes by the name Spank Ocean.

I was clearly very excited about my present, just as much as every guy around me. I swear to God this giant Twix bar was only in my possession for 1/3 of the night. This takes me back to the days at The Pink Palace with Aga’s strap-on. Guys will always act disgusted when they first see a giant dildo, but after a few minutes, they’re all about waving it in the air and trying to see if they can stick it to an unlikely surface.

I was home at 2 at night and I started feeling sick. I woke up, hugging 3 full water bottles, because I kept getting up at night to get something to drink, would take one sip and take it to bed with me. I am not very smart when I am drunk.

I took a shower, went out to buy food, watched some Geordie Shore and then went out shopping, where I randomly bumped into some friends. Then my mom picked me up and we went back to her place, where I cooked for my mom’s side of the family. I had a great time, although I was still dealing with nausea and stomach cramps.

Cake <3

Back to the list. If you don’t remember, or have never heard of it before, here it is, with the achieved goals crossed out:

I decided to compile all the photos into one collage, so you can get a feeling of what I’ve been doing with my life the past year. Pretty good stuff.

Now, as much as I enjoy doing nothing all day, I decided I needed a vacation. I was offered such an opportunity when Shank, a friend from The Pink Palace, decided to visit Copenhagen for a few days. This post is not for the easily offended, because Shank’s face is in it a lot. In fact, his face is the only thing in this post, besides a lot of words.

Copenhagen is a 3-hour train ride from Horsens, and I had everything perfectly timed, so that we would both arrive at the Central Station at the same time. Less than fifteen minutes after getting on the train, I am informed the passengers have to switch trains. That’s super annoying and all, since I paid extra to reserve a seat. We switch trains while complaining and small talking a bit, but the train decides it isn’t going anywhere for the next 30 minutes. In the end, I arrive a full 60 minutes later than expected. I’m not too upset though, since Shank is waiting with a beer for me – after I find him, ‘cause I walk straight up to a guy at McDonald’s that looks just like him, only to realize it’s not him seconds before it’s too late.

We stay at Generator Hostel, which is 3 km away from the train station – and we decide to just walk there. The weather’s really nice for a November evening. Of course we take the longest time getting to our hostel – even with GPS. It’s a really cool place with a huge common area, a bar and a TV area. We meet our roommates from Australia, who are super nice and very cool about what happens later on. I’ll get to that.

As soon as we’ve dropped our bags and talked to our roommates a bit, we go out to find food and end up at a Danish restaurant. Now, as much as I failed to show Shank around, I won when it came to getting him Danish food. We get meatballs and fried fish and remoulade and gravy and potatoes and…. Alright, we have the most Danish meal ever. We head back to the hostel and hang out at the bar, which is slowly filling up. Shank does the worst thing you can possibly do here: buy 10 shots of Fisk. Also, two large beers. We play some Foosball and force down the shots, go out for a few cigarette breaks and decide to go to bed, ‘cause we’re definitely feeling like taking it easy tonight.

And that is the last thing I really remember. We’ve spent hours trying to piece together flashbacks from that night, and I think we decided on this story:

A girl in a striped shirt was looking at Shank most of the night, which he pointed out to me. As I got drunker, I offered to go talk to her, but he was just feeling like going to bed. When we were done with our drinks (I think there were a few Jägerbombs and other dangerous things involved), we decided to head up to the room, but we ran into Girl In Striped Shirt and her friends on the way and I guess I started chatting them up. We ended up joining their table and drinking more – judging from the apps I had opened, I tried to pay one of them. Probably for drinks, but who knows. Shank might have made out with Girl In Striped Shirt, and I might have aggressively hit on a guy, and might have gotten rejected, but I don’t remember any of that. I went to bed early, probably around 11.

Now, according to our roommates, I came into the room and tried to get to the top bunk, which I had claimed earlier. It didn’t go too well, but I managed, and as soon as I laid down, I had to throw up. Getting down from the bed was just as hilarious to watch, and I threw up several times, both in the toilet, and in the showerroom. I obviously don’t remember that. I do remember that I passed out in Shank’s bed, as I couldn’t keep climbing up and down, and he hadn’t gotten back from the bar yet.

So I wake up at 7 in the morning, when Shank climbs down from the top bunk (he snuck in God knows when and took my bed since I was passed out in his) and loudly says something like “Ew, I just stepped in your vomit!” And yes, in my drunken state I had just turned my head and started throwing up, thus getting it all over the side of the bed and the floor. Even my shirt had throw-up on it. Our roommates tell us the story of how I got back – a mystery, since I never learned to master the maze that is the hallway that leads to the room – and after a lot of apologies, a shower and complaints about feeling shitty, we go out to find breakfast. We randomly end up at Nyhavn and eat breakfast – or, Shank kinda eats for both of us, since I can’t keep anything down.

Nyhavn

After getting some food in our systems, we head to Christiania. It’s a Freetown that is known for its (totally illegal) use of cannabis, amongst other things. It’s a big tourist attraction, and I have never been there before, so it’s about time. Photography isn’t allowed, but I’ll paint you a picture: worn-down buildings decorated with colorful graffiti, tiny shops where you can buy everything with has Bob Marley on it, and of course, a lot of hippies. Also, it really smells like weed there.

We walk around a little bit, and then we sit down and share a Sandwich – How I Met Your Mother reference. It makes us feel a lot better, also super tired, so we get the metro back to the hostel and pass out in our room – and it’s not even noon!

At about 5 we wake up and slowly start feeling normal. We have some beer and some fresh air, as we spend the better part of an hour trying to find Restaurant BROR, which is a pretty nice restaurant close to city center. All the waiters speak English, and the dishes has something either gross-sounding or unfamiliar in it. You get a 4 course menu with some wine, and no one knows what the meals are going to be. Our menu was an app (I will use a Parks and Recreation reference to describe food courses) with fish and celery, then another app with beets and tomatoes (sooo good!), then a trey-trey with chicken, and lastly, the zert was apple crumble with rosemary ice cream. On top of that, we had bread with bone marrow smoked butter (WTF, but soo good), a cheese platter, chicken liver, and yes, BULL’S BALLS. It was cut in slices and breaded and fried, and tasted a bit like a chicken nugget, but as soon as I put it in my mouth, I remembered what it was, and felt a bit disgusted. Shank has been on a mission for like a year to try bull’s balls, so he was pretty excited about eating it. I have really weird friends.

Bull nuggets in the bottom right corner

We had some amazing wine though, and because the waiter forgot to bring us wine for all the courses, we got it for free – yay! The bill ended up being like half the price of what I thought it’d be, so we were pretty stoked about that. Also, one of the male waiters was so smoking, I would have eaten him instead. Would probably have been cheaper too.

Since it’s a Sunday, everyone is watching a movie instead of hanging out at the bar, so we have a pretty quiet night. We have a beer, and the bartender pours us a free shot because we’re the only ones hanging out at the bar. We go outside for a cigarette and then call it a night.

The next day, we check out and say goodbye to our roommates. We lock up our luggage at the train station, and go for a walk on the main street, where we’re almost run over by a truck. We buy Danish pastry at a bakery, and as soon as we finish that, we find an American burger joint called MAD that brews its own beer – we had planned to go to a brewery at least once, but failed, and ended up at this place instead. Burgers and beers are always delicious, even before noon. We realize we need to hurry up to catch our trains, especially me, since my train only leaves once an hour. Luckily, we manage to get back to the station, get our luggage and then jump on our separate trains. In my opinion, the weekend has been a success. I’ve really enjoyed hanging out with my friend, and having some fun. I would say this vacation of doing nothing has prepared me to go back home and do nothing again.

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ABOUT

I'm Christine, and my dream is to see the world and talk about it nonstop. I've been testing the boundaries of acceptable social behavior since 1991, and my hobbies include making lists, drinking wine and generally being inappropriate.
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